Day 11 & 12 - Belgrade

Getting into Belgrade was another experience. We rode our first night train. We arrived to the train station early to make sure we had things figured out. We found the train and immediately knew it was going to be a long night. At first we could not figure out which compartment were ours. And the conductor didn't speak any English so we were a little stuck. After a few minutes of just standing in there Max had the brilliant idea that since we were in Eastern Europe the train conductor probably knew Russian. So Max was finally able to get everything settled and we found our "luxurious cabins".

Yea it was bad...but not horrible..well the smell was horrible because of smokers but we settled in and tried to get some sleep. One thing I would recommend if you end up taking night trains...buy a sleep sack. Its like a sleeping bag but just 2 sheets. It made things a lot more comfortable. So I try to get some sleep and finally around 1:20 I started dozing off..well at 1:30 I was awoken to someone banging on our door and trying to open it. In my half asleep state I was FREAKED...but then remember something about crossing borders and showing passports. So I grab our passports and open the door. The Hungarian police come, flip the lights on and say who knows what then throw our passports back! And of course Max slept through it all. So things settle down after a while the train finally starts again and I try to fall back asleep...only to have the train stop a few minutes later for a second passport check. This time it was the Serbian police. This is around 3 AM. Around 4 I think I finally fell asleep...and we got to Belgrade at 6 am...so two hours of sleep was all I got.

We were all exhausted when we got to Belgrade and we really had to go to the bathroom...so we found the bathrooms..which we had to pay for..which we didn't have any Serbian money to pay with..and this is what we found

 {nothing like a good leg work out}

The morning was pretty rough. We were all exhauted and hungry. After waiting for 30 minutes for a tram that never came we decided to take taxi's to a breakfast place that sounded good. We got there and the breakfast place wasn't there...and nothing was opened..so we had to wait even longer. Once we finally got food we ventured to the apartment...we walked back to the train station...took a bus...and then walked uphill in 90 degree weather with all our luggage. We were SO TIRED!! We got to our hotel which was a house a family converted to a bed and breakfast type place. It was my favorite place we stayed at. The family was so sweet and it felt like we were just staying with some locals. I loved it and think I want to stay in more places like this when travelling.

After resting we got ready and decided to head out to see Belgrade or Beograd as it's said there.

Belgrade was awesome. We didn't really know what it had to offer but all of us loved it.

 {crash a wedding = 5 pts. this was one of the things on our point list. as we were coming to this church we say the bride and groom and all of us thought crash a wedding! So we went up and told them what we were doing and if we could take a picture! They said yes and we posed with them. The photographer was so funny. He was taking pictures with his camera and posing us and making sure her dress looked pretty. It was so awesome. We also won photo of the day for this picture and it was published in the Wharton Journal}

 {learn about making art with rocks=3 pts}

 {if you can see max is standing in the risk your life are.....}

 {talking to a local business owner=5pts}

{dinner at a floating restaurant with a depeche mode concert in the background)

The next day was spent at a lake riding bike, playing mini golf and riding paddleboats

 {mini golf on uneven asphalt is hard}

 

{especially when you lose your golf ball and it takes all 6 of us, plus the owner, plus the ice cream stand worker, plus a little kid an his mom to find the ball}

 {a lot of pictures from our last dinner in belgrade but it truly was one of the most amazing meals i've ever had. the restaurant was super cute. we dined outside, under string lights. max and i learned a lot about wine and the culture of wine testing :) and then we had the best food ever! everything was perfect! and the best part was max and i only spent about $15 a person, which is unbelievably cheap for how fancy the experience was. I would go back to Belgrade just to eat at that place again! }

{us with the owner of the bed and breakfast. he was so awesome}